Submission Call: Stories about food
For stories about food, how we eat it, prepare it, share it, and the all the other roles it plays in our lives.
Deadline: This submission call is now closed.
Word count: 1,000-10,000 words
Submission fee: standard (see submission guidelines).
Payment and rights: standard (see submission guidelines).
How to submit: Read the submission guidelines, then send us your story through our submission form. Choose the ‘Stories about Food’ submission type at the top of the form.
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Food is such a powerful part of our lives. The way we eat, and what we eat, helps to shape our identities, and sharing food is central to so many of our relationships with other people. This submission call is for short stories about food: how we eat it, prepare it, share it, and the all the other roles it plays in our lives.
We welcome both realist stories and our usual range of supernatural and speculative fiction. We're looking for stories about what people eat and why, the impact people's food has on their lives, and the way they relate to each other. We want stories about chefs and grandmothers, lovers and students, friends and colleagues. They might take place in kitchens, campsites, restaurants, dinner halls, canteens, park benches, supermarkets, farms... anywhere we interact with food.
As always, exactly how food fits into the story is up to you, so don't feel limited: food could be central to the meaning of the story, the source of a plot twist, or just a way to add atmosphere and depth to the tale. Feel free to experiment, and don’t worry if your story only fits the theme loosely: any stories that stray too far will still be considered as general submissions.
If you're in need of inspiration, we'll be exploring aspects of this theme between now and May on our website. Sign up for our email newsletter to stay informed.
As always, we welcome writers and stories from around the world.
The stories we select from this submission call will feature in a future Fiction Desk anthology. If you've not yet read one of our anthologies, it’s worth picking up a recent volume before you submit, to get an idea of the range of styles we feature in our pages. Our latest, New Ghost Stories IV, is a supernatural anthology and is out now. You'll also find a more varied range of genres in our previous anthologies, Houses Borders Ghosts and Somewhere This Way.